Danielle Mahr, ABC reporter: Time is a precious resource for medical students. But in between lectures, tutorials, clinical placements and all that study is the hope that one day they'll have the skills to help people. I recently met a group of medical students who are getting a head start doing just that. I'm Danielle Maher and this is the Make Me Feel Good podcast.
Kevin Wayne Keating, GCUH patient: I thought I was in the wrong place. I thought, I'm not in a concert hall because you can always tell live music is compared to something that comes out of electronics and speakers. And then I realised it was happening outside my door.
Danielle Mahr, ABC reporter: That's Kevin Wayne Keating. He's a patient in the Cancer and Blood Disorders Unit at the Gold Coast University Hospital. He's made his way out of his room, dressed in a purple hospital gown, to see where the music's coming from. There's a string quartet in the middle of the ward.
Kevin Wayne Keating, GCUH patient: I've got various things happening inside my body that grow and probably eventually put an end to you. So what better way to go out than the beautiful sounds of these young people in the string quartet.
Danielle Mahr, ABC reporter: Amy and Jiayuan are on the violin, Yijun is on the viola and Rio is on the cello.
Ryo Takamizawa, medical student: So I'm Rio. I'm part of a string quartet of Griffith University medical students and we do fortnightly performances at the Oncology Ward. Sometimes we get requests from the patients, which is always exciting. And we spend an hour playing for patients. Sometimes we go to their rooms and the hope is that we can give them joy and hope to their wonderful days.
Laura Strange, Principal Project Officer: We regularly receive emails from staff, patients, visitors, emails, phone calls, verbal feedback when we're just chatting to people throughout the facilities. The music really does give them a sense of joy, a sense of community and belonging and that's for both the people listening but also the people playing the music.
Jaewon Lee, medical student: I think it's kind of like my escape mechanism from all the stress from studying. It's something that I've been enjoying since I was young and getting together with my friends to study the same thing. We kind of have that idea of all the passion of music that we share together and yeah, it's just something that I gain a lot out of.
Yi Jiun Chan, medical student: Music for me personally is a way for me to reduce anxiety and provide a sense of comfort and relaxation. Patients feel the same. It's a really fulfilling feeling for me that patients are saying things like this.
Danielle Mahr, ABC reporter: What time do you all wake up?
Amy Lee, medical student: I think the better question would be when do you go to bed? Because I go to bed very late.
Ryo Takamizawa, medical student: Sometimes there won't be an answer. Yeah, it really depends. I think a lot of times in medicine, if you don't give the time to volunteer, you will spend it all just studying and I think volunteering is a great opportunity to just take a step back and I think give back and force myself to spend that time.
Amy Lee, medical student: It's an abstract medium for connection and communication and I love that I get to feel like I can connect to some of the patients here. So yeah, I think that the values that I cultivate here will ultimately definitely be carried through as a health practitioner later.
Kevin Wayne Keating, GCUH patient: I could listen to this all day and I believe that you'll work better as well. If you're in your working environment and you have classical music, it's inspiring and you may hate it to start with but it will slowly bring you along and lift you up. Wonderful idea all round.
